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Labor Dept. addresses unemployment backlog

Lawmakers hear about potential system changes

The state House Labor & Industry Committee on Wednesday learned of changes that could help the department it oversees better serve constituents who have been deluging lawmakers with complaints about benefit holdups that have occurred due to the overwhelming demand for unemployment compensation since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The changes include elimination of waiting weeks and credit weeks, loosening of a restriction in the “portal” by which lawmakers’ offices relay complaints to the department, the addition of department staff, better communications and installation of a long-awaited computer upgrade and other technological improvements, officials said in a live streamed hearing.

The department expects to begin using its new Benefits Modernization — called Ben Mod — computer system in the spring, after postponing installation last year because of the crush of COVID-19 unemployment claims, said Acting Labor Secretary Jennifer Berrier.

The department also hopes to launch texting technology within two months, she said.

It has already installed a chat bot that has answered 2 billion calls, a service that is being continually upgraded in its capabilities for answering specific questions, Berrier said.

The department has learned many lessons regarding communication and is constantly looking for ways to keep people better informed about the status of their claims and about glitches in the system, Berrier said.

Legislative staffers have fielded so many calls of distress that they’ve needed to become “psychologists,” state Rep. Ed Gainey, D-Pittsburgh, told Berrier.

Too many of those constituents are stuck not knowing what has become of their claims, and even a simple message that the department is working on them would help, Gainey said.

“Can we give them some hope?” he asked.

The department, which radically expanded its staff last year, plans to hire even more people to answer phones and clear out emails, Berrier said.

The demand is immense, as up to 80,000 people call the department in a single day, Berrier said.

There’s also a plan to add 50 examiners to the roster of 250 that handles “determinations” on cases that aren’t straightforward — the kind of cases that tend to lead to the distress calls, according to Berrier.

Many people have been waiting for months for determinations, said state Rep. Leanne Krueger, D-Folsom.

Such cases tend to involve employer challenges and require “development of facts” before they can be resolved, said Deputy Secretary for Unemployment Compensation Bill Trusky.

It can be hard to find people to take the examiner’s job, because it’s stressful and requires a lot of knowledge about unemployment compensation laws, Berrier said.

“It’s not for the faint-hearted,” she said.

The department already has assigned referees who normally handle regular unemployment compensation appeals to handle appeals for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for the self-employed, Berrier said. The department hopes to clean up the backlog in those appeals “in short order,” she said.

There are now seven referees working six days a week, plus clerks, department officials said.

The department is working on a change to enable legislative staffers who forward constituent complaints to the department through the dedicated “portal” to hand off cases to other staffers when necessary.

The current setup renders lawmaker’s offices helpless when the staffer who initiated a case is out sick or goes on vacation, officials said.

Lawmakers can help the department and their constituents by amending the law to eliminate waiting weeks and credit weeks, neither of which are federally mandated, Berrier said.

The waiting week for a claimant’s first benefit payment is a holdover from “ancient technology” and isn’t necessary anymore, because the department can now implement payments more quickly, Berrier said.

Eliminating of the waiting week would mean that claimants wouldn’t need to wait 14 days for their first payments, she said.

The credit week terminology — a credit week is any week beginning Sunday in which an individual earns a qualifying $116 — is confusing to both employees and employers, especially those headquartered in other states, Berrier said.

Explaining it ties up the time of staffers.

“It clogs up the works,” she said.

Eliminating it would make the process “leaner and more understandable,” she said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.

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